Introduction to Image Manipulation:

To develop student’s knowledge and skills in “Visual Arts” the students were shown how to use a GNU Image Manipulation Program to create and manipulate digital images.

Essential Skills:

Communication

Problem-solving

Social and Co-operative

Computer

Problem Solving

Students Learnt to:

Understand basic graphics terms and concepts.

Download pictures from a camera onto a computer.

Search and download Royalty free images.

Various effects and technics that are produced by manipulating stored pictures using Gimp computer software.

Save their work in different image formats on the computer.

Print their manipulated images on a printer at school.

Display images in computer suite and/or school foyer.

Present their work at school assembly.

Express their artistic ideas.

Basic Terminology

Students completed a web-quest looking for the meanings for some basic graphics terms that they would be using.

Image

An image is a visual representation of something.

Image/Photo Manipulation

Image and photo manipulation is the application of image editing techniques to photographs or images in order to create an illusion or deception after the original photograph or image.

Font

In traditional typography, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface.

Clip-art

Generally deals with line arts. Mostly created with Gif format where line of the picture is more important than color. Cartoons, icons and sometimes buttons also comes under this category.

Resolution

Resolution is the amount of detail an image holds. The higher the resolution the more detail the image has.

File Formats

A file format is a standard way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file. The common formats for images are Png, Jpeg and Gif.

Pixels

The word "pixel" means a picture element. Every photograph, in digital form, is made up of pixels. They are the smallest unit of information that makes up a picture. Usually round or square, they are typically arranged in a 2-dimensional grid.

Project 1 - Changing at photos Background

This was the first time that most of the students got to use GIMP, so this needed to be a simple project but would test their patience because of the amount a time it was going to take to select their image.

Students took photos of each other against a plain background which was to be manipulated later using the image manipulation software "GIMP".

Steps

Open image in GIMP

Use paths tool to create a selection around themselves then invert the selection which enables them to delete the background leaving just themselves.

Search google images for a suitable background and save to their folders

Before and After

Once they had completed the changing the eye colour, they were allowed to explorer other techniques.

Project 4 - Out of Bounds Image

Students used a technique that makes an image appear to burst out of a photos frame. This technique uses all of the tools the students had used in previous projects but also uses a few they hadn't used before so still giving them a bit of a challenge.

Steps

Students will take an action photograph or search for an free to use or copyright free image on google images.

Download to their folder

Open Image in Gimp and add alpha channel

Duplicate image and add alpha channel

Create new layer

Colour - Black

Move below image layer

Select part of main subject with path tool to be outside frame

invert selection and delete background

Deselect eye symbol layer 2

Add new layer

Add alpha channel

Use Rectangular Selection tool to delete the middle of layer 30pixels from edges

Select none

Use Perspective tool transform the layer into a frame around the photo

Select layer 2

Use rubber to remove background not in the image frame

Select frame layer and use rubber to remove parts of frame that shouldn’t be seen

This website has been successfully checked as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. This means that the resource in question identified itself as "XHTML 1.0 Transitional" and that we successfully performed a formal validation of it. The parser implementations we used for this check are based on OpenSP (SGML/XML) and libxml2 (XML).